DEAD AND BURIED

By AYAH Paul ABINE

Some American (or was it a European?) recently had very kind words for Cameroon. The person declared that “Cameroon is the only country in the world (he/she) knows where the more arrests are made of embezzlers, the more embezzlement thrives”. Every true Cameroonian should dismiss that person as ignorant or as an inconsequential personality. That would be in perfect congruence with how we were dismissive of Transparency International when that world-renowned organization classified us as most corrupt in the world? It would also be consistent with our notorious national doctrine of self-righteousness and hollow deification of “very inferior personalities” – vips. Nothing new!

The CRTV programme “Cameroon Calling” plays on every Sunday morning, at least in part, one of the richest guidelines on the fullness of life on earth. It teaches, inter alia, that we all are children of the universe as much as wild life and flora. By extension, Cameroon is part of the universe even as we are “an Island of peace in a turbulent sea”. It is ipso facto suicidal for us to continue to glorify the delusion that we are unique. If truly we were, we would not be investing so extravagantly these days in the cleansing of our image abroad.

There lies the motive that impels us to opine whenever we can that it is dangerous for our community to depart from the universal canons that make for lasting stability, genuine peace and, of course, development. The primary of those canons is the rule of law. And the taproot of the rule of law is universal respect of the law. To put it otherwise, the law is no respecter of persons. Anything short of that is fantastic fallacy.

It follows that we are sewing dangerous seeds of discord when members of government and other self-proclaimed owners of the Cameroonian nation divest the law of its binding force with celebrated impunity. In the recent past, some of those persons have proclaimed that our national capital is their village, followed by their ordering tenants-at-sufferance on their land to quit… This was the crime of ethnic cleansing falling within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Tribunal. But in our “island of peace” with accentuated unity in advanced democracy, even verbal disapprobation of such utterance so manifestly inimical to unity and true nationalism was not forthcoming.

In similar vein did our leaders apply the law on ELECAM in a way that, invoking our uniqueness, they transformed condition precedent into condition subsequent; and yet they attracted the approbation of persons with notorious sectarian proclivity from certain parts of the country. Reason became the idle business of those that were seen as seeking to counter the novel national doctrine of alternating between heaven and hell as willed by St Peter at the glittering gate.

Little wonder then that the Minister of Armed Forces has now logically amended the law equating GCE Advanced Level in “two papers” with Bacalaureat to GCE Advance Level in “three papers”… It is alleged that before him, another minister had identically conducted himself in respect of the entry examination into the medical school. But who wants to question, much less contradict the policy that government is team spirit?

Yet, such are the dangerous ramifications we anticipated when we argued the case against toying with the supreme law of the land that the Constitution is. Never can the roof leak without wetting the ceiling. As few have failed to learn that the said supreme law has been reduced to discretionary prerogatives, they have similarly reduced the ordinary law, with the result that discrimination against minorities contrary to the law is covered with absolute impunity.

But are we not the root cause of our powerlessness, even if only in part? Let us be honest enough to appreciate the following few instances out of the many when we have conducted ourselves as if communal life is individualized rather than general and continuous.

We erratically sang a song after reunification with “our brothers in the east” in self-congratulation on some vague future success. Secondly, if President Ahidjo received ten million “motions of support”, (whatever that means), Anglophones, who were only about a fifth of the population, were the authors of half of them. Is it not true that two of the first three CPDM Sections that called for constitutional revision to make the current president eligible for a third term of office, were west of the Mungo? We surely are not without knowing that the first of such Sections to plead the case for life-presidency for the current president is also west of the Mungo. None of us can feign ignorance that Anglophones were among the first Cameroonians who preached that ELECAM should be judged on the field and not on whether it was legally constituted or not. Nor were those who conducted marches in support of the contemporary establishment outside the realm of value judgment any others than Anglophones.

All this was prompted by sordid sectarian interests and greed. Those that have to pay the price tomorrow are the children of the poor, and posterity in general. That is the concrete foundation of our apprehension. If we who were brought up in missionary institutions are so deficient in the solid moral values that a true nation should be built on, it goes without saying that the children growing up in the present system stand no chance of preaching, let alone, practicing morality.

May we be humble enough to learn that a coin is the other side. In other words, one cannot take advantage of “beneficial” (?) illegality to the exclusion of “adverse” illegality. Jurists would submit that he who comes to Equity must come with clean hands. I may have offended some sporadic believers when I wrote “The North West Contagious Virus”. But I am consoled today that my vindication has come sooner than later. The myopic who called me names then may wish to read the article in question again. I am consistent because I am nourished by the indisputable truth about human life that “a taste of the forbidden is a second transgression”. Those who find it difficult to understand that statement of mine are counseled to seek assistance rather than expose themselves to ridicule with senseless demagogy dictated by sectarian and parochial outlook.

The true Cameroonians are not yet born. Otherwise, few would doubt that, if we persist in our self-serving complicity, legality in our beloved nation may soon be dead and buried?

NB:Ayah Paul Abine ,who is currently a second-term Member of Cameroon's Parliament ,is a career Jurist.He is a noted critic of ill-conceived government plans and practices.